Selected Quotes

"... And then a
Creative Youth Club appeared in Lviv. The story behind it was as follows. Les
Taniuk came to stage "Thus Huska Died".
In the end, he was banned from staging the play, but he set up this Creative
Youth Club headed by Mykhaylo Kosiv. I was a member of the presidium, and our
task was to organize some sort of cultural soirees. Well, the first one was
dedicated to Lenin, of course, like a ‘steam locomotive’. The second one was a
serious piece – a soiree in honor of Lesya Ukrainka. And that was when I met
Bohdan Stupka. ..."

"... I decided to arrange Opanas Zalyvakha’s exhibition in Lviv (…) I invited television. So they come, and Panas, you know, is a handsome grey-haired man, well-behaved. They start talking to him, “Well, Opanas Ivanovych, we’ve read your biography, you were there and there, studied in Saint Petersburg with such and such famous people, etc. etc. And what did you do in this specific period?” And he says, “I was in Siberia for five years.” “Was it some sort of Komsomol package holiday or what?” “Heck, no, I was in the camps there.” This material was shown on TV anyway. They just cut out this piece ..."

"... So I came
to the theater, and they looked at me puzzled, a big question mark on their
faces. Why so? I came wearing a military
uniform, tarpaulin boots, and a garrison cap. I guess they thought, “Why did
she come dressed like that?” Well, I didn’t really have anything else.
Romanytskyy, People’s Artist of the USSR, who was sitting at the table, said, “Don’t
worry, sweetheart. We will dress you up.” And he called someone over (not sure who that was)
and said, “Bring the costume designer here.” And that person did. And the costume designer dressed me up. She even supplied me with shoes. ..."

"... There were about fifteen of us. We would gather and split roles… a pseudo-vertep or something. We had a bell, and it was clear that we were not just walking on the streets, we were caroling. (…) Once we had an incident though. People really liked it when we came to carol. It was forbidden at that time, you know, but we dared anyway. So people would treat us to some booze, so we were quite wasted by the morning. Once, being drunk, we stopped by KGB to carol. It happened just like that. We were passing by KGB, and I said, “Let’s carol for them.” So we stopped by, opened the door, entered, but we were kicked out by the guard ..."

"... Someone said once that a theater manager is like a mom for
actors, which is true indeed. You love them all like your own children... There were a great many performances in
our theater, even though at certain points someone for some reason was not on
good terms with someone else, but there’s one piece that will remain deeply
etched in my memory until the end of my days – "The Drayman and the King". It was an amazing performance in terms of
atmosphere... the atmosphere in the theater on
that day was special. Something different was happening in the theater. When we
had that performance on stage, people talked in a different manner, they look
at each other differently. That performance had a uniting power. ..."

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